


A Price to Pay

by Qirunwei



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Bromance, Episode Related, Episode Tag:Ex Post Facto, First Season, Friendship/Love, Gen, Hurt, Implied Slash, M/M, Missing Scene, Possibly Unrequited Love, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-29
Updated: 2014-10-29
Packaged: 2018-02-23 03:01:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2531651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qirunwei/pseuds/Qirunwei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Happened during s1e08 Ex Post Facto. Serious spoilers for this episode. Some brief words on Harry's side when he reflects upon Tom the possible murderer. There's a price to pay for your every action. Beta'd by my lovely friend Georgie. I'm not a native speaker. Please forgive me if there's any incoherent sentence. Don't forget to leave a comment! XD<br/>Also in Chinese as Chapter Five of my other work, listed below.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Price to Pay

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [汤金段子集](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2527424) by [Qirunwei](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qirunwei/pseuds/Qirunwei). 



Harry Kim woke up on the biobed from the sleep of the completely exhausted. He might have felt better if he had just woken up from death. He groaned as the medical emergency hologram scanned him briskly. “You’re almost fully recovered, Mr Kim. All you need now is rest and lots of fluids for your dehydration. Do that and you’ll be up and ready to throw yourself into fatal crisis again in no time. ” The holographic doctor never seemed to be in a good mood.

“Have they got Tom back?” Harry croaked through his impossibly dry throat, trying to sound human again. “They made me leave without him.”

The doors to the medical bay chose to swoosh open at that very moment. Captain Janeway and Tuvok rushed in, carrying an unconscious Tom Paris between them. The Doctor and Kes went in a hurry to help settling him down. Harry struggled a bit, managed to sit up. With everyone surrounding Tom like a flock of worried mother hens, no one seemed to have noticed him. He listened half-mindedly to the Doctor’s neutral technical words analyzing the situation, and then, broken words in the captain’s gentle but firm tone, “…punishment…serious brain damage…appeal to sentence…” until Tuvok’s voice pierced through the dense fog messing with his brain. “The Banean punishment for murder was lethal injection.”

He eyes widened at the words and fell again onto his back bonelessly. The last thing he remembered before drifting back to sleep were merely Tuvok’s determined promise to find out the truth.

* * *

The next time he saw Tom was after Tuvok had proposed a mindmeld to solve their problem. He had heard about the process before, since it was one of the considerably less mysterious rituals performed by the Vulcan people. As the Doctor was arguing with the captain over the risks of doing so, Harry had a stolen moment beside a weak but wide-awake Tom Paris.

“How are you feeling?” he asked tentatively. Kes stood beside him, expressing her worry by staring at them both with those incredibly large eyes of hers.

“Could have been worse. It’s nothing compared to New Zealand.” Tom assured him with a pale smile. His golden hair was tousled, strands sticking onto his face while usually they were combed back carefully. “They didn’t give you any trouble after they took me away, did they? I’m sorry to have dragged you into this.”

“Don’t be. But if you’re hiding anything from us-” Harry tried his best to sound stern in front of a sincerely regretful Tom Paris, only to be interrupted when a small breathless pant escaped the patient’s lips.

The arguing trio turned simultaneously towards Tom. They all knew what was about to happen. Their 14-hour limit was up. Tom was entering another memory cycle. If Tuvok wanted to do it, it was now or never. Harry looked to the captain for her better judgment, seeing her giving a slow but firm nod, as Tuvok carefully slid experienced fingers onto Tom’s cheeks and searched for melding points.

When it started, Harry was sure he would never see anything as terrible. Tom’s eyes were wide open, filled with sheer panic he swore he had never seen in them before. Not on Tom Paris. His body surged up, while he muttered “No! No! I… This isn’t the way it happened!” punctuated by deep guttural growls. They had to grab him by the shoulders and hold him down, so that the meld could be carried out. Then suddenly he was clutching at the fabric of his clothing and choking, like he was fighting back a sharp pain in his abdomen. Tears were squeezed out of his stunning blue eyes while he suffered under the dagger in his mind. Harry could not have imagined how Tom had gone through this alone in an alien prison. Hell, he couldn’t believe at all he had acted as if he was alright. _Damn this man’s pride_ , he thought as he gritted his teeth together with the suffering soul on the bed.

Finally, the convulsions stopped at the same moment when Tuvok ended the mindmeld. The tall Vulcan staggered and would have collapsed if Captain Janeway and the Doctor had not acted immediately. Tom lied on his side, gaped and grunted painfully for a few seconds before falling back again into the bliss that was unconsciousness. A part of Harry died at the sight.

Tom’s clutched palms were sweaty. Harry eased them open gently before leaving medbay in silence.

* * *

“This is all your fault, you know.” Tom said, matter-of-factly, while maneuvering the shuttlecraft with skillful hands. Sometimes Harry wondered if he could fly a starship blindfold.

“My fault?” Harry really should be pissed at him, but he found he didn’t have the energy to do so at the moment. The words came out sounding cold and distant.

“Yeah. I consider you the conscience I never had. You’re supposed to keep me on the straight and narrow. ”

Harry’s heart might have melted a little at that statement, but he didn’t let it show. “I tried to warn you.”

“Funny, so does she.”

“If it’d been me, I would’ve stayed as far away from her as possible.”

“Someday it will be you, Harry. You’ll meet her, and you’ll know it’s wrong from the first moment you see her. You’ll know there’s nothing you can do about it. ”

Harry Kim didn’t know what to say to that. Oddly, he could relate to that feeling. Maybe he had already pondered the thought before without actually realizing. Maybe he would do so in the future. As Tom said, it was hard to keep one’s conscience clean when you were 70,000 light years from home. It was a strange new world out there. Many times the morals they had known in the alpha quadrant didn’t apply anymore. It was no longer either black or white. It reminded of him the conversation he had with Tom a few weeks ago, about Libby. Would he blame her, if it took them another 20 years to get home, and she was someone else’s wife and family? He didn’t think so. And would she feel betrayed, if he came home with someone he truly loved? Harry shot a quick glance at his friend. Tom’s had a shower and changed into clean uniform. His golden hair was again neatly combed, showing no trace of the vulnerable man in medbay before. It was easy to think that he did it, because he had been in prison before, because his record was tainted, or simply judging by the way he spoke as if confessing. But Harry’s thoughts always flew back to the memory of the man writhing and struggling from phantom pain. If he was truly the murderer they had claimed him to be, then he deserved all of this. There was a price one had to pay for whatever he did. However, thinking about the respected man beside him being reduced to a mess of pain and panic made Harry’s heart twist and break.

Harry was glad to hear the beep from the sensors, indicating the approach of the Numiri ship. It had saved him the trouble to come up with a response, but also it could mean that whatever Tuvok was trying to do to clear Tom’s name was working. He gazed into the blonde’s eyes as the transporter beam locked onto them, and found there the one constant in this ever-changing universe. 


End file.
